How to Rank Number 1 on Google

 

Every business owner dreams of ranking number one on Google. Unfortunately, getting to number one isn’t as easy as you may think. It is often a long-term strategy that will require a great deal of investment, time, and effort. Search engines like Google remain the most trusted source of finding information online and organic visits remain the most valuable traffic. A search engine will send the most traffic to a website beating social media by 300%. Research has shown that 75% of users never click past the first page of search results. The websites ranking number one on Google get an average of 36.4% click-through rate while people on the second page get only 1.5% click-through rate. The top rankings have many values and benefits for your business. Here is how you can rank number one on Google.

How long does it take to Rank on top Google?

The short answer is 6 to 12 months, but it really depends. Back in the early 2000s, it was easy to rank on Google. You simply added the main keywords for your business to the title, URLs, and content body and you got to the top 10 in the search results within a few weeks or even days. Not for major competitive terms but for less competitive terms. There was less competition and the search engine algorithms relied just on links and keywords on a 50-50 basis for website rankings to be achieved. This means if you built some links and added relevant keywords to your site, then you had a great chance of ranking on Google quite quickly.

It really does take a year+ unless there is a lot of people typing in your domain name and you have a high click-through rate along with amazing metrics. Google updates its algorithm frequently. Back in 2018, google made 3,234 changes which is an average of 8.9 per day. The algorithm has become so much more sophisticated, it is now much more difficult to rank on Google even if you have a relatively new or old domain.

Follow Google Rules

There are rules made by Google that must be followed. If you want to rank a site, it is simple just follow their guidelines. Google’s webmaster guidelines clearly give all the practices that Google approves of and those they don’t. Google makes it clear that your site will receive a penalty or worse remove it entirely off the internet if you proceed with practices that are not permitted for higher rankings. If a site has been affected by a spam action, it may no longer show up in results on Google. If you aim to reach number one you must follow all the rules. Google search console is a useful tool that they provide to help you configure your website to meet their best practices

Improve your On-Site SEO

On-site SEO is one of the first improvements to make to improve your Google rankings. Your website pages can be optimised and you will start to see improvements in your rankings within a few days.

  • Optimise your site around your keywords
    Your keywords should be at the beginning of your title tag. Google puts a slight emphasis on terms that show up early in your title tag.
  • Your on-site content should contain a lot of wording
    The longer your content is the better your rankings will be. Research has shown the longer content will rank better in search engines.
  • Your keywords should be added 2-3 times on your page
    When you add relevant terms to your page you are letting Google know that this page is about this certain search query, which in turn can help boost your rankings.

Go Niche

To succeed in SEO, you must understand the competitive landscape. If you are a small-scale business, you really don’t want to be competing with larger businesses that may have unlimited budgets. There is a chance you could outrank them; however, you still may be wasting money and time in the long term. Therefore, it is so important to niche it down. Adjust your SEO strategy and focus on a particular area of the market, it will be a lot easier to rank for a keyword that is niche and relevant to your business.

Pick Realistic Keywords

As stated above, you shouldn’t try to compete for very popular keywords. Once you target the right keywords, it is possible to get to the top of Google. You want to rank keywords that user’s online type in and are looking for. Search for relevant keywords that have little competition and a decent number of searches. Combining both short-tailed and long-tailed keywords is the best way to drive more traffic to the site. Long-tail searches make up most searches on Google. Google estimates that 70% of search traffic is from long-tail keywords.

There Should be Plenty of Quality Content on your Site

Make the content on your site thorough and valuable. Creating quality and useful content will influence your website more than any other factor. You need to regularly produce and publish content. The content should be compelling, relevant, high quality, and unique. Content can help boost your rankings in many key ways, these include:

  • More content means more keywords, this gives more opportunities for Google to return to your site in the search results.
  • More content means a reduced bounce rate so people will stay on your site for longer.
  • The more content you have, the more backlinks you will have to your site. Backlinks are extremely important for ranking high and ranking number one on Google.

Think about your target audience and why they are visiting your site. Overall content can mean writing blogs, infographics, newsletters, videos, and much more. It is important to publish longer content that exceeds 2,000 words. The longer content you have the better chance of earning quality backlinks which can greatly improve your chances of ranking higher and in the number one position on Google. The more content you write, the more pages that will index thus the more traffic you bring to your website. The more people visiting your site, the more popular you become. Google recognises popularity as a ranking factor, therefore, pushing your website up in the rankings.

Quality Backlinks

Off-site SEO is the most important part to improve your site rankings. Link building involves building backlinks to your site from reputable sources with the intent of improving search engine visibility. Common linking strategies include guest posts, citations, business directories, blogs, and much more. Links are counted as a vote for a site. The higher number of votes to your website, the more chances you are of ranking at the top of search results. Links are divided into two categories these include:

High-Quality Links

High-quality links are earned naturally over time and are relevant. Acquiring these links can take time.

Low-Quality Links

They are paid or spammy links that are bought and not earned to help increase the number of links pointing to a website.

Links are a major factor for ranking high on Google search engine. Your website needs lots of natural links pointing to it in order to achieve rankings on Google. Google is extremely competent in detecting spammy or unnatural links. Link popularity measures the quantity and quality of links pointing to a webpage. There are many factors to consider when link building these include:

Link Quality

Link quality is determined by the trust, popularity of the host pages/sites, the authority, and the sites linking to them. A quality page is:

  • Trusted
  • Ranks well
  • Is linked frequently by trusted sources
  • Answers questions
  • Shows topic expertise

Anchor Text

Anchor text is the clickable part of the link you see. Google has stated, the anchor text will influence the query your site ranks for in the search results. There is no right or wrong way, however, don’t hyperlink the same phrases repeatedly. When creating anchor text:

  • Make your anchor text conversational
  • Hyperlink when it makes sense

Link Quantity

Link quantity is not just the number of sites linking to you, but the number of links that are linking to those pages too.

Link Relevance

Link relevance defines what your page is talking about and click query can help Google determine what pages are relevant for different topics. It is best to search for links from similar sites that have the same terms and topics.

Reaching the number one spot doesn’t happen over time. It takes time, patience, and a lot of hard work. The competition is fierce and there are also many factors to why your website is not-ranking. Once the best SEO practices are followed there is no doubt, you’ll achieve great success online.